The Diary of Anna Baerg as a source for Sandra Birdsell's Katya, or The Russlander

In Sandra Birdsell's The Russlander, Katya, the main character, buys a journal as a young teenager and faithfully records recipes, women's wisdom, and the events of the Russian revolution as they unfold, tragically, for the Mennonites. (The novel was published in the United States as Katya.) The narrative device for the novel has the aged Katya telling her story to a young historian. It turns out that Katya has preserved her journal and the family letters, so she is the keeper of others' stories as well.

In the 1980s, a number of diaries kept by Mennonite writers during the Russian Revolution and Mennonite immigration to Canada were published, as Mennonite historians became more interested in social history. According to Joe Springer of the Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College, the most popular of these is the Diary of Anna Baerg, 1916-1924, translated and edited by Gerald Peters (1985, CMBC Publications). Anna Baerg's age and situation resemble Katya's: Anna's father was the foreman of David Dick's large estate, whose beautiful grounds provided a childhood paradise. The Dick children were Anna's childhood playmates; it was only as they grew older that she began to feel the disparity between their social situations, according to Gerald Peters. Because she suffered from the after-effects of a childhood illness, Anna was spared hard physical labor. Her role on the sidelines allowed her to hone her observation and writing skills.

Was Birdsell aware of Anna Baerg's diary?  I'm quite sure she was. She doesn't borrow Anna's story entirely, but she does drop a hint in The Russlander (Katya) that she's read and learned from Anna's diary. Reflecting on her youth, the aged Katya remembers when she "was acutely aware of nature unfolding around her, its daily drama played out in the changing sky" and mentions the overly-ornate writing of her youthful journal entries, such as "His Majesty King Winter is upon us and has covered the world outside my little attic window in a cloak of ermine" (354).

In her entry for November 26, 1917, Anna Baerg wrote: "His majesty, King Winter, has ended nine balmy months of freedom and mobilized his troops. On the 24th of November, nine o'clock in the morning, at the supreme command of General Frost, the 'white army' crossed the borderline between heaven and earth, taking possession of the country side" (7).

There's no reason Birdsell would have needed to borrow the phrase "His majesty, King Winter" unless she wanted to drop an intertextual hint that her Katya had learned from Anna Baerg.  Certainly reading Anna Baerg's diary reinforces the historical context of Katya's story. The pictures of the Dick estate offer a sense of the grandeur and wealth of the Mennonite land holdings in the turn-of-the century Ukraine and the trajectory of Anna Baerg's narrative follows a similar pattern of nostalgia, fear, faith, privation, and migration.

The owner of the estate next to the Dicks' belonged to a Suderman, the name of the estate holder in The Russlander (Katya) who was killed during the revolution. David Dick and his wife and several family members were murdered on their estate, as was his Suderman neighbor. And one of David Dick's daughters is named Lydia, the name of Katya's closest Suderman playmate.  Anna's family, however, was not killed when the Dicks were murdered, although her sister Nela was on the estate at the time. Rather, her father had died several years earlier of typhoid fever.

Scattered throughout the journal are other details that suggest Anna Baerg's diary as a rich source for The Russlander.

In her entry for January 21, 1921, Baerg describes a woman that sounds very much like the crazed Vera at the end of Birdsell's novel. "An insane woman has been seen running around behind our garden and in the churchyard. Some say she is possessed. I am told she attacked someone--even the children are telling stories about 'the witch' at school.  Poor, deplorable woman. What may have driven her to this? How much more insanity will these times produce?" (74).  Clearly, Baerg's questions are stimulating ones for a novelist.

In her entry for September 25, 1923, Baerg records the story of a Mrs. Enns who dies of food poisoning after her finger was caught in a meat grinder (116). This echoes the tragedy of Willie Krahn's wife in Birdsell's novel, who dies of food poisoning after a contaminated meat grinder  falls on her foot and breaks open her toe.

Anna Baerg's diary is a lively and vital document written by an observant and intelligent observer and witness. Sprinkled with poems, it also offers a sense of humor that cuts across the distance of time.  Of her new home in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Anna writes:

 "Oh, the earth is just as black here as there, the sky just as blue, and people all have noses in the middle of their faces wherever you go--in other words, one can live here, even live well. But it's not home. The English language sounds so harsh and foreign. I don't think I will ever learn to like it. Still, it's time for bed. And who knows what tomorrow will bring" (154).

What a deadpan last line from a woman who has just survived a revolution.